Connect with us

Business

Pets Vs. Landlords

Published

4 minute read

Pet ownership in Red Deer is very popular, however, in rental properties it can be a real area of contention between Landlords and Tenants.

First let’s examine what is meant by a no pets clause in a lease, because a lot of tenants think that it simply means no cats or dogs…so they bring in a caged animal like a rabbit or Hamster, Turtle, Snake, Bird or Fish.

Different landlords will look at these other pets with varying degrees of concern but the safest bet is to assume No pets, means No Pets.

As a property manager with a lot of years in the business I have had large aquariums leak while tenants were away on vacation causing substantial damage to the property, including the dead rotten fish.  And we have had small animals escape their cage and chew carpet and electrical wires that caused a fire.

…and more than a few times the tenant did not have insurance to cover the damages.

Next, you have tenants that take on babysitting of pets for others, sometimes this babysitting becomes longer term.

Unfortunately, the length of time the pet is in the house is irrelevant, for most landlords, No Pets means No Pets, not even temporarily.  Some landlords even object to pets visiting for a few hours occasionally.

We have had a tenant get a dog due to security concerns, sorry but a security scare does not give you the right to suddenly get a dog.  NO Pets means NO Pets, not for security, companionship or any other reason.  You can get a security system if you feel the need, wireless please.

This is not to say that all landlords are ruthless tyrants, many will allow for small caged animals or fish, but if your lease has a No pets clause in it, make sure that you get written approval first or you are in breach of your lease and can be evicted over this issue.

In Alberta landlords, can charge a non-refundable pet fee, it can be anything that they want, may be a onetime fee or it may be a monthly fee.  Some provinces do not allow landlords to ban pets such as Ontario, but Alberta does until the Tenancy act that governs Residential tenacities changes.

Why do Landlords have such an aversion to allowing pets:

First is damage to the property.  While 99% of pet owners are great, it is the 1% that can cause a lot of grief, I have had firsthand experience where a single cat has caused damage to an entire home in carpet repairs due to clawing and peeing, damages that far exceeded the security deposit that was held.

Housebreaking new pets can result in lots of damage until the pet is trained.

Second, sometimes future tenants are allergic to animals.  We have lost many potential tenants simply because the moment the prospective tenant walked into the home they started to get stuffy as they were extremely sensitive to the pets that were in prior, it can take a lot of extra specialized cleaning to remedy a house allergen free, it is just easier to not go there in the first place.

Finally, in multi-family such as apartments and townhomes, nothing drives neighbours crazy like a dog barking next door all day long at every slight sound.

For most landlords the risk of the 1% out ways the desire of the 99%

Red Deer Property Rentals is Central Alberta’s Upscale Rental Home Agency.  CLICK HERE to check out our website for your next quality rental home.

Les Brown

More from this author
Business / 7 years ago

Pets Vs. Landlords

Local Business / 8 years ago

Spring Rental Market is Here!

Community / 8 years ago

Why You Need Tenant Insurance

Business

It Took Trump To Get Canada Serious About Free Trade With Itself

Published on

From the  Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

Trump’s protectionism has jolted Canada into finally beginning to tear down interprovincial trade barriers

The threat of Donald Trump’s tariffs and the potential collapse of North American free trade have prompted Canada to look inward. With international trade under pressure, the country is—at last—taking meaningful steps to improve trade within its borders.

Canada’s Constitution gives provinces control over many key economic levers. While Ottawa manages international trade, the provinces regulate licensing, certification and procurement rules. These fragmented regulations have long acted as internal trade barriers, forcing companies and professionals to navigate duplicate approval processes when operating across provincial lines.

These restrictions increase costs, delay projects and limit job opportunities for businesses and workers. For consumers, they mean higher prices and fewer choices. Economists estimate that these barriers hold back up to $200 billion of Canada’s economy annually, roughly eight per cent of the country’s GDP.

Ironically, it wasn’t until after Canada signed the North American Free Trade Agreement that it began to address domestic trade restrictions. In 1994, the first ministers signed the Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT), committing to equal treatment of bidders on provincial and municipal contracts. Subsequent regional agreements, such as Alberta and British Columbia’s Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement in 2007, and the New West Partnership that followed, expanded cooperation to include broader credential recognition and enforceable dispute resolution.

In 2017, the Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) replaced the AIT to streamline trade among provinces and territories. While more ambitious in scope, the CFTA’s effectiveness has been limited by a patchwork of exemptions and slow implementation.

Now, however, Trump’s protectionism has reignited momentum to fix the problem. In recent months, provincial and territorial labour market ministers met with their federal counterpart to strengthen the CFTA. Their goal: to remove longstanding barriers and unlock the full potential of Canada’s internal market.

According to a March 5 CFTA press release, five governments have agreed to eliminate 40 exemptions they previously claimed for themselves. A June 1 deadline has been set to produce an action plan for nationwide mutual recognition of professional credentials. Ministers are also working on the mutual recognition of consumer goods, excluding food, so that if a product is approved for sale in one province, it can be sold anywhere in Canada without added red tape.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has signalled that his province won’t wait for consensus. Ontario is dropping all its CFTA exemptions, allowing medical professionals to begin practising while awaiting registration with provincial regulators.

Ontario has partnered with Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to implement mutual recognition of goods, services and registered workers. These provinces have also enabled direct-to-consumer alcohol sales, letting individuals purchase alcohol directly from producers for personal consumption.

A joint CFTA statement says other provinces intend to follow suit, except Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador.

These developments are long overdue. Confederation happened more than 150 years ago, and prohibition ended more than a century ago, yet Canadians still face barriers when trying to buy a bottle of wine from another province or find work across a provincial line.

Perhaps now, Canada will finally become the economic union it was always meant to be. Few would thank Donald Trump, but without his tariffs, this renewed urgency to break down internal trade barriers might never have emerged.

Lee Harding is a research fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Continue Reading

2025 Federal Election

Carney’s budget is worse than Trudeau’s

Published on

By Gage Haubrich

Liberal Leader Mark Carney is planning to borrow more money than former prime minister Justin Trudeau.

That’s an odd plan for a former banker because the federal government is already spending more on debt interest payments than it spends on health-care transfers to the provinces.

Let’s take a deeper look at Carney’s plan.

Carney says that his government would “spend less, invest more.”

At first glance, that might sound better than the previous decade of massive deficits and increasing debt, but does that sound like a real change?

Because if you open a thesaurus, you’ll find that “spend” and “invest” are synonyms, they mean the same thing.

And Carney’s platform shows it. Carney plans to increase government spending by $130 billion. He plans to increase the federal debt by $225 billion over the next four years. That’s about $100 billion more than Trudeau was planning borrow over the same period, according to the most recent Fall Economic Statement.

Carney is planning to waste $5.6 billion more on debt interest charges than Trudeau. Interest charges already cost taxpayers more than $1 billion per week.

The platform claims that Carney will run a budget surplus in 2028, but that’s nonsense. Because once you include the $48 billion of spending in Carney’s “capital” budget, the tiny surplus disappears, and taxpayers are stuck with more debt.

And that’s despite planning to take even more money from Canadians in years ahead. Carney’s platform shows that his carbon tariff, another carbon tax on Canadians, will cost taxpayers $500 million.

The bottom line is that government spending, no matter what pile it is put into, is just government spending. And when the government spends too much, that means it must borrow more money, and taxpayers have to pay the interest payments on that irresponsible borrowing.

Canadians don’t even believe that Carney can follow through on his watered-down plan. A majority of Canadians are skeptical that Carney will balance the operational budget in three years, according to Leger polling.

All Carney’s plan means for Canadians is more borrowing and higher debt. And taxpayers can’t afford anymore debt.

When the Liberals were first elected the debt was $616 billion. It’s projected to reach almost $1.3 trillion by the end of the year, that means the debt has more than doubled in the last decade.

Every single Canadian’s individual share of the federal debt averages about $30,000.

Interest charges on the debt are costing taxpayers $53.7 billion this year. That’s more than the government takes in GST from Canadians. That means every time you go to the grocery store, fill up your car with gas, or buy almost anything else, all that federal sales tax you pay isn’t being used for anything but paying for the government’s poor financial decisions.

Creative accounting is not the solution to get the government’s fiscal house in order. It’s spending cuts. And Carney even says this.

“The federal government has been spending too much,” said Carney. He then went on to acknowledge the huge spending growth of the government over the last decade and the ballooning of the federal bureaucracy. A serious plan to balance the budget and pay down debt includes cutting spending and slashing bureaucracy.

But the Conservatives aren’t off the hook here either. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has said that he will balance the budget “as soon as possible,” but hasn’t told taxpayers when that is.

More debt today means higher taxes tomorrow. That’s because every dollar borrowed by the federal government must be paid back plus interest. Any party that says it wants to make life more affordable also needs a plan to start paying back the debt.

Taxpayers need a government that will commit to balancing the budget for real and start paying back debt, not one that is continuing to pile on debt and waste billions on interest charges.

Continue Reading

Trending

X